The Substance of Faith

Christ and Our Thoughts

January 17, 2015

One of the ways I develop sermon ideas is to create a file folder where I collect notes to myself, items torn out of magazines, or quotations. Newer folders are digital and contain links. Scraps of paper and index cards fill the oldest folders.

Years ago I wrote “Christ and Our Thoughts” on a folder that has never become a sermon. This week the folder has finally proved useful, with Sunday’s sermon addressing how we love God with all our mind (Mark 12:30). The quotes below have proven helpful for the sermon. Not all of them will make it into the sermon, but they all show wisdom about cultivating the way we think about life and God.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are in his acts and his words! His real life is lead in his head and is none to none but himself. Mark Twain

We fail in our thinking before we fail in our behavior. Douglas Rumsford in Soulshaping, p. 99

Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only fault lies in our accepting it (temptation), cultivating it, and taking pleasure in it. I quote Luther saying that we cannot prevent the birds from flying over our head, but we can prevent them from building their nests in our hair. Paul Tournier in Guilt and Grace, p.44

The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors; that which it loves, and also that which it fears. It reaches the height of its cherished aspirations. It falls to the level of its unchastened desires – and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.Every thought seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit. James Allen in As a Man Thinketh

Paul tells us that we are transformed by the renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2). The mind is renewed by applying it to those things that will transform it. Remember, the mind will always take on an order conforming to the order on which it concentrates. Richard Foster in Celebration of Discipline, p. 62f